Countries that cause instability should pay more to alleviate humanitarian crises – Churkin to RT
Countries responsible for launching wars and stirring instability should be held accountable and pay a heavy share of the financial burden of aiding devastated regions, Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told RT.
“We believe that, first of all, it should be the responsibility of those countries who actually caused those problems,” Churkin said in an interview with RT’s Sophie Shevardnadze, referencing Iraq and Libya as examples of countries suffering present-day instability.
“We know what countries caused destabilization in the Middle East, starting with the invasion of Iraq. We know who caused destabilization in Northern Africa with the invasion of Libya,” Russia’s UN ambassador said in an apparent reference to the United States and its NATO allies.
“Mostly those countries will have to pick up the tab for humanitarian work,” he repeated.
One of the ways to hold the “guilty” countries responsible for the crises they have caused is to make them pay more than others, Vitaly Churkin stated, adding that the countries must also “understand, accept and admit” what they have done.
Speaking of the possibility of bringing any country to book for the unfolding refugee crisis, Churkin said it was not an easy task since the responsible countries “in most of the cases keep silent.”
Though “everybody basically agrees in the US that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake,” one would never hear an American public figure admitting the guilt and saying “this is our national responsibility to make sure Iraq is taken out of the crisis.”
“Everybody needs to understand what caused the problem and those countries which did that must carry their heavy share of the burden, including the financial burden,” Churkin concluded.
Last year the UN agencies responsible for refugees were described as “financially broke” by Antonio Guterres, former United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The problem is that “most of the humanitarian work is done by voluntary contributions and the amount of important resources is so staggering that sometimes the international community falls short,” Churkin told RT when asked about the issue of UN funding.
The current humanitarian crisis that hit the countries of the Middle East and North Africa and affected Europe is considered to be the worst since the WWII. Some 1.8 million asylum-seekers illegally entered the European Union in 2015, fleeing war and poverty in their countries, according European Union border agency Frontex.
A UN report stated in June that 65 million people have been displaced worldwide with Syria and Afghanistan being the hardest hit countries. More than 21 million among them are refugees and almost half of them are under 18 years old.
